


follow me until the end

by maybankiara (juggyjones)



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Sarah Cameron-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24743473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/maybankiara
Summary: ‘Are you okay with that now? With me accepting you?’Sarah hesitates, thinks it over. Kiara’s eyes are open and vulnerable and perhaps Sarah can’t read them because she’s showing everything at once – laying all her cards on the table.When she nods, it’s honest. ‘You’re the only person I’ve got, Kie.’— in which sarah’s journey of self-love is the one kick-started, developed, and brought to its goal by kiara’s love.
Relationships: Sarah Cameron/Kiara Carrera
Comments: 6
Kudos: 55





	follow me until the end

**Author's Note:**

> this was requested from a prompt list on tumblr, and the prompt was “all these people taking miles when you give them an inch, all these followers but who’s gonna follow me until the end?” from drake's _emotionless_. title's also from that.
> 
> i felt that sarah needed a bit of growth before she could truly be with someone, so there's quite a bit of that, and i hope it's done well.

There are times when Sarah wonders why she keeps giving up on people – why the idea of someone sticking with her through thick and thin doesn't excite her the way it should. Instead, it scares her.

How could someone be so foolish to love someone like her?

Sarah Cameron, the Kook princess of Figure Eight, is a liar and a cheater. She makes promises she doesn’t think back to and breaks people’s hearts as if they were made out of paper; as if they were repairable.

This is what’s going through her head as she sits on a hammock in front of the Chateau, watching the sun fall. John B is supposed to come back soon, as his new job requires him to work late evenings. It coincidentally gives her enough time to think through what she’s about to do, to make sure it’s the right choice.

She made a promise to Kiara to not hurt John B. She made a promise to be serious about him. In a way, more earnest than ever before, this is her doing exactly _that_.

Her fingers twirl her hair and it’s freshly washed, smelling like her coconut shampoo. She looks nice, too, wearing jean shorts ripped at the bottom with a light, baby pink blouse that hides what it needs to and reveals everything else. A bandanna is around her head, the way she learnt to wear it from Kiara, and Sarah knows she put effort in.

It was supposed to be date night. Instead, John B is going to find her at the Chateau, and hear all the reasons why they should call it quits.

Sarah sighs, letting herself fall into the hammock. It stinks of weed, and the scent brings back the memory of her first time smoking it, on the boat with Kiara. It was the night that she made Kie the promise about John B, and it ended up being the only promise she keeps thinking back to. Mostly because she knows she can’t keep it if she’s lying to herself.

Hopefully, Kiara will forgive her.

That was also the first time Sarah admitted she has commitment issues. It was the first time she began thinking about it, about the cause, and how it manifests in her life – it was the night Sarah began to grow from a Kook princess to someone with self-respect.

Because of Kiara. It’s all been because of Kiara.

Sarah grits her teeth, closes her eyes and lets out a shaky breath, because if Kiara ends up hating her for breaking John B’s heart, then it will all be for nothing.

_No -- not for nothing_ , she reminds herself, fingers trailing along the hem of the shorts right above her belly button. It’s better if she tells John B how it is instead of doing what she’s done before.

She knows better now.

She knows better than to believe people won’t use her, or like her because she offers them something. What she had with John B was nice while it lasted, a summer kind of lovin’ that wasn't meant to last.

John B liked her because she offered something new; excitement. Topper liked her because she gave him the prestige he needed. All her friends and boyfriends from before liked her because she could offer them something no one else could.

All of them, but Kie.

Kie, who accepted her back even after Sarah cut her off without explanation when her own feelings got too muddled to withstand.

Kie, who was the bigger person and chose to move on.

Kie, who knew what Sarah was like and still believed she could be _better_.

So that’s what Sarah is doing now -- being the person she promised Kiara she would be. She cares about John B, she is serious about him, and that’s why he deserves to know that Sarah simply doesn’t believe anyone could ever truly love her -- or at least that she would let them do so.

When John B comes to the Chateau, his surprised smile at the sight of her in his hammock nearly makes her cry, but she fights through her feelings.

‘Hey,’ he greets her, walking towards her.

Sarah says it back. When he comes close and leans in for a kiss, she turns her cheek, and he sits down next to her, his smile faltering.

‘Is everything okay?’

She takes him in; the sky behind him is painted colours of the rainbow, the sun having settled a while back. It’s dusk, now, and dusk is _their_ time of the day. Now, John B’s face is in the very middle of these colours, the expression on his face the one of concern, for _her_. Is it her dad, is it Rafe, is it something else? Is she okay?

Sarah doesn’t need to ask to know this is what’s going through his head. He loves her, she knows that, but in an almost childlike kind of way. He’s innocent – too kind and naive for someone like her. She loves him, too, but not in the right way.

So when she tells him that things aren’t okay, a tear falls on her cheek.

John B is more understanding than she expected him to be. He doesn’t hate her or hold anything against her, instead asks her if they can still be friends. ‘Just friends is enough,’ is what he says, and it’s at this point that tears begin streaming down Sarah’s face, even with a smile.

He understands that she needs to take time for herself. She’s honest with him – she tells him of the commitment issues, of how she’s scared of feelings, and he accepts it without questioning. She doesn’t tell him that she needs time on her own to learn to love herself, because it’s cliche and cheesy and she just _really_ doesn’t want to say it. She needs to figure out who she is.

And another thing that she doesn’t tell him is that she’s falling in love with one of his best friends, because she _can’t_.

When they break the news to the Pogues it’s late afternoon of the next day. Sarah arrives to the Chateau a little later than usual, her hands fiddling with one another, shoulders slouched, and a shaky smile on her lips.

John B meets her halfway to the HMS Pogue, pulling her into a tight hug. Sarah melts into it – she didn’t know what she’d be getting herself into, coming here. John B could’ve changed his mind, or he could’ve already told the Pogues and maybe they’d change his mind.

He pulls back, but his hands remain on her shoulders. ‘You doing okay?’

Sarah nods. She chuckles, a little, at the absurdity of him asking her that when she’s the one who broke up with him.

The Pogues must’ve noticed the lack of any proper PDA because when Sarah finally gets on the boat, they’re quiet.

Kiara is sprawled across the front of the boat, wearing only a big T-shirt and a turquoise bikini underneath. She looks at Sarah with a slight frown between her brows, but doesn’t say anything.

John B sits down next to her. He pretends not to notice the odd atmosphere and instructs JJ to start the boat, get them out into the marsh. All he gives Sarah is a small, encouraging smile.

‘Sarah and I broke up last night,’ he announces. ‘It was a mutual decision.’

There’s a moment of silence, where everyone takes in John B’s words, and Sarah’s heart drops in realisation that maybe they wouldn’t want to be friends with her.

But JJ doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Wow, you guys lasted long. Pope, pay up.’

‘Fuck you, JJ,’ Pope responds, but takes out a few bills with a sigh. ‘Couldn’t you have been together at least until the end of summer?’

‘You guys bet on the length of our relationship?’ Sarah asks in disbelief, before bursting into laughter.

It’s not long until things are back to normal, with an occasional jab at the breakup, but Sarah realises she’s not John B’s girlfriend with the Pogues – she is one of them now.

Sarah Cameron, a _Pogue_.

By the time they arrive back to the Chateau, all of them a little drunk and JJ a little high, Kiara is the only one who hasn’t really spoken to Sarah the whole evening.

She doesn’t want to cause a scene by asking her flat-out what the whole thing is about, so she waits until the boys leave to go get some more alcohol, and it’s just the two of them.

Kiara is lying in the hammock, the same one where the breakup happened the night before. Her elbows and feet are the only things peeking out, and Sarah braces herself for the impact as she plops into the hammock, opposite of Kiara.

The girl isn’t looking at her. Sarah’s heart breaks a little.

‘My intention was never to hurt him, Kiara,’ she begins. ‘I want you to know that I couldn’t stop thinking about promising you I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t– I couldn’t pretend I like being with him.’

It’s not that Kiara scoffs, or pointedly looks away, that makes Sarah’s heart sink to her stomach – it’s the fact that she doesn’t acknowledge her words, at all.

She looks beautiful. The golden hour makes her hair the colour of amber, her skin almost dark gold, and even the subtle scowl on her face doesn’t take away from the adoration Sarah holds for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah admits. Kiara doesn’t flinch, so Sarah stands up from the hammock, facing the girl one last time. She takes a deep breath. ‘I can’t love someone like John B before I love myself. Before I do that, I have to learn how to accept that people can like me, instead of pushing them away the moment I start getting scared.’

She sees Kiara swallow the gulp in her throat, and if she isn’t wrong, there might even be tears forming in her eyes – but she remains quiet, motionless. Her hair is down, framing her face as she lies, and Sarah takes in the way she looks simply ethereal.

_This is goodbye_ , she thinks, and she can’t convince herself otherwise.

Her feet take her away before anything else spills over her lips. She isn’t there when the boys come back with alcohol, and she isn’t there for the next few weeks, either. John B calls, every now and then, to check up on her.

He doesn’t understand. Then again, none of them do.

Learning to love herself is a process that Sarah realises takes more time than she thought it would. It’s all about understanding what made her the way she is – her mother leaving, mostly, and her friends using her because she’d buy them pretty birthday gifts and because she wouldn’t have a problem covering a restaurant bill. The attention she lacked from her mother made her adore anyone who gave it to her, never questioning the purity of their intentions.

Boys, she realised, took after her father. Overprotective and overly caring, thinking of her as their little princess. Even John B – he saw her as something that needed to be protected, cherished, looked after. And Sarah ate it up, because that’s the love she’s learnt to give.

Learning to love herself is accepting that she isn’t who she’s spent sixteen years of her life trying to become. She isn’t a Kook princess, she isn’t her daddy’s little girl, and she isn’t someone who moulds their personality to whichever boy she’s dating at the moment.

She is Sarah Cameron, and she pushed away the only person who knew her before she even knew herself.

She is Sarah Cameron and she is a coward.

Instead of calling Kiara, or asking John B how she’s doing, or making any effort whatsoever to contact the girl she’s in love with, she writes her a letter. It’s sappy and it’s full of things like _you were the only person who could see right through me and I was scared of accepting who I was_ and _I didn’t understand that the reason why I could be myself around you was because you never wanted anything from me except to be my friend_ and _when I pushed you away it was because I was scared I was going to become the person you saw me be_ and _I keep letting you down but if you gave me one more chance, Kiara Carrera, I would love you until the end of the world._

It’s a piece of paper that ended up in the trash can, before she took it out of her house and burnt it in her backyard, angry tears streaming down her face. These weren’t her words – these were the words of people who have lived and loved before her, and they don’t encapsulate the feelings inside Sarah’s chest.

She watches her words burn to ashes, and then gets rid of the evidence. It’s dusk again – Sarah feels as if it keeps being dusk during some of the recent most important moments of her life.

This is the one where Sarah decides to grow up, and get over Kiara Carrera.

It’s also a few moments later that her phone chimes with a text from the aforementioned Kiara Carrera, asking if she can come over.

_Of course_ , Sarah replies, before she has time to think twice.

With ashes of her love letter leaving grey marks over her legs, Sarah welcomes Kiara into the Cameron house with a lot less grace than she would’ve hoped.

‘Hi,’ greets Kiara.

‘Hi.’

Sarah’s eyes glance up and down; Kiara’s wearing her usual attire – shorts and a tank top, with a bandanna around her head. Her hair is loose, just like it was when they spoke last, and not much is different.

Aside form the fact that her face is unreadable to Sarah, for the first time in what feels like forever.

The blonde steps to the side. Kiara walks in and the doors are closed behind her. They walk to Sarah’s room in silence and once they’re inside, within four walls, the weight of the situation seems to fall upon Sarah’s shoulder.

She sits down on the bed. Kiara follows, even is she sits on the opposite side of the bed, not meeting her eyes.

Sarah’s fingers trail along the pattern on the covers. It’s an intricate pattern, delicate in the way it’s woven – expensive, too, and she suddenly feels self aware because of this. She knows Kiara dislikes excessive use of money that does not have a valid reason.

She wants to apologise, but she doesn’t. She just puts her hands in her lap, uncomfortably.

When Kiara meets her eyes at last, Sarah still can’t read her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t have judged you for breaking up with John B.’

A shaky smile graces Sarah’s lips. ‘It’s okay. I understand it.’

Kiara shakes her head, sighing, and leans against the headboard. ‘The breakup did him good. He understood it more than any of us did. I guess I understood why you did it, too, but I refused to.’

Sarah’s fingers go back to tracing the pattern. Her thoughts are soundless, more of feelings than words, and she can’t piece them together.

Kiara shuffles on the bed until she’s resting her back against the headboard, legs in a crossed position. Her lips are barely parted and eyes intense, and Sarah has to look away before she the intensity gets to her, too.

‘I don’t blame you for doing what you did, Sarah.’

‘You don’t?’

Kiara shakes her head again, with a sheepish smile, this time. ‘I was bitter because I thought you hadn’t changed. But I was wrong. You’re not the same person who ditched me.’

‘I didn’t ditch you,’ Sarah says, quietly. ‘I was scared because you accepted me.’

‘Are you okay with that now? With me accepting you?’

Sarah hesitates, thinks it over. Kiara’s eyes are open and vulnerable and perhaps Sarah can’t read them because she’s showing everything at once – laying all her cards on the table.

When she nods, it’s honest. ‘You’re the only person I’ve got, Kie.’

She doesn’t say friend, or girl friend, or anything like that. Sarah says _person_ and she means _person_ , in all and every meaning of the word.

Kiara smiles. ‘I guess we can work with that.’

And work with that, they do. Kiara brings her back to the Pogues and the dynamic is different, but better. If Sarah thought she was a part of the group before, she was wrong. Now is when they fully accept her, all of them, as Sarah Cameron, and not Sarah Cameron of the Kooks. She ditches the persona she spent years building and spending times with the Pogues helps her rediscover herself.

She learns to love herself because love is the only thing the Pogues have for one another. They never pressure her into being anything other that who she is, and it’s the exhilarating freedom that Sarah loses herself in.

Being herself is freeing. It also comes with realising that her love for Kiara Carrera is a little different than for the rest of the group.

Perhaps she was right, all those months ago, when she wrote that letter – Kiara is the one who stuck with her over and over again, gave her chances, believed in her when even she herself couldn’t.

It’s only a matter of time until loving Kiara becomes too overwhelming to remain a secret. Coincidentally, the moment comes during a Boneyard kegger, when Kiara is dancing with some of the Tourons and girls from the Cut. Her dress is flowery and short, floating around her, flowers in her hair. Her smile is big and bright and she looks almost like a nymph.

Beauty is a person, she realises, and Sarah’s heart belongs to her.

She joins the dance and Kiara pulls her in, taking her hands, dancing with her as if it’s the end of the world. The fire in Sarah’s chest is burning, the moment is never-ending, and it’s only the two of them.

Nothing else exists. Nobody else matters.

Sarah loves Kiara because Kiara loves who Sarah is even when she’s pretending to be someone else.

When Sarah takes hold of Kiara’s hand, the buzz of electricity runs through her entire body, and she drags the hippie out of the crowd. All they hear is the crashing of the waves and distant music and chatter, and it’s beautiful.

Sarah is still holding her hand when she hugs her, instinctively, and revels in the feeling of their bodies pressed together. She wonders if Kiara can feel the electricity, too.

‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘for everything.’

It’s a _thank you_ , but it’s _I love you_ and _I wouldn’t be here without you_ and _you are my best friend_ and every other feeling Sarah couldn’t put into words.

Kiara laughs, and it’s so wholesome and pure that Sarah’s knees buckle. When the girls pull back, their hands are still wrapped around each other’s waist, and the space between them could all too easily be closed with their lips.

Sarah blinks the thought away. Kiara is still smiling.

‘C’mon, Sarah. That’s what friends are for.’

‘Friends,’ Sarah echoes.

She doesn’t mean it to sound bitter, but the smile falters in the corners of Kiara’s lips. ‘Are we not friends?’

‘I was just – forget it.’

Sarah drops her hands to Kiara’s hips and pushes her away, carefully but firmly. She turns her back to the girl and walks over to the ocean, dipping her bare feet in the cold water, arms crossed on her chest.

She hears Kiara join her, feels the girl’s warmth next to her, but doesn’t say anything. If there are tears on her cheeks, the alcohol doesn’t let her notice.

She sighs, and the breath she lets out is shakier than she would’ve wanted it to be. ‘You’re the only person I can’t get away from. Every time I get scared, every time I push you away, you come back and show me that I can do better than that. And Kie, you’re the one who deserves better, and I can’t help—’

‘If you’re trying to bail again, Sarah, I’m going to actually kill you.’

Sarah smiles, but it’s a sad smile. Kiara isn’t smiling, so Sarah shakes her head. ‘I’m not trying to bail on you. I want nothing more than to remain friends with you.’

‘I thought you said you’re starting to learn how to love yourself,’ Kiara points out. ‘To know your self-worth. If I wanted to stop being friends with you, I would’ve done that a long time ago. So tell me – do you really believe you’re not good enough to be friends with me?’

This – this is precisely why Sarah is in love with Kiara. Nobody could ever understand her the way Kiara does and it’s something she took for granted too many times. This time, she won’t make the same mistake.

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Do you think you’re going to?’

‘No.’ Sarah doesn’t even need to think about this one. It’s a promise she made to herself and it’s the one she’ll keep, whatever it takes. ‘I know I need to treat myself better but I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t showed me.’

_If you hadn’t showed me what it feels like to be loved; to be worthy of being loved._

Kiara’s eyes meet Sarah’s and just like every other time, the understanding is wordless but complete. When Kiara’s eyes glance to Sarah’s lips, the world slows down. ‘Someone had to.’

She doesn’t know who closes the distance, but Kiara’s lips are against hers and it feels like everything she’s ever dreamt of.

Kiara Carrera isn’t foolish to love someone like her. For the first time in Sarah’s life, someone sticks with her through thick and thin, and doesn’t ask for anything in return but _love._

And love is all the she could ever hope to give her.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! you can come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://maybankiara.tumblr.com)!


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